Sister Feng Character Analysis

“Sister Feng, your call!”
For an example, Sister Feng is used by a Kopitiam’s assistant to ask her answers a call. It is notable that the author used ‘Sister’ in the subtitles instead of ‘jie’ which phonetically similar to Mandarin pronunciation. According to Phiangjai (2009), the author used “Sister Feng” instead of “Feng Jie” because there is a word that already existed in English.
“Young chap, why do you keep smoking?”
Another example is “Young Chap”. The author used the loan blend word “young chap” instead of young lady. Chap is a short form from a Hokkien word, ‘chap bo’ which means female. Therefore, it is notable that, after the loan blending process, the word has undergone shortening process, which make it carries negative connotation

It is interesting that all loan translation for the proper names were actually the nicknames of the characters in the movie. Besides, it is noted that the nicknames were actually adjectives to describe their characters. For example, Fatty is referred to Botak’s sister, as such illustrated in the line “my fatty sis remains fat”. Barley Ice is referred to Ma Li Fan’s sister, Ma Li Bing. It is because in Mandarin, it is pronounced almost as ‘Barli bing’ and she is portrayed as a young, sweet girl who likes to drink Barley Ice. Fried chicken is used as a nickname by a male character who has a skinny

According to Newmark (1988), there is potential for people to use some words that peculiar to themselves. The author may hear the word ‘Chap bo’ from a spoken discourse because Hokkien has no standardized writing system. This is also can be due to lack of vocabulary in Mandarin or English within the author so he/she will just fill it with a word.

Another factor is because of simplicity. The nicknames that translated literally from Mandarin were used because of its simplicity. It is important in movie discourse that the characters should be ‘labelled’ with simple yet attractive names or nicknames to create a good impact from the audience. It can be related to this study since its genre is romance-comedy, the nicknames used create a better impact on the roles played by the characters.

Last but not least, the reason for borrowing is because of prestige motive. Dorjee () stated that people nowadays are more admire and emulate exotic culture. For example, the Prince Charming role is enacted from western fairy tale. In Chinese cultures, the Prince Charming is defined as ‘a prince rides on a white horse’, which the imaginary connotation is clearly adopted from western culture, that considered more prestige. Besides, as pointed out by Phinagjai (2009), English has superior linguistic level and it is widely used as loan